How did you have started speed skating?

I started skating with the age of 5. My parents took me to some lakes in the Munich area, and after a few times I wanted to go to a club’s practice because my parents couldn’t teach me anymore. So I joined EHC Klostersee Grafing in 1990, but as a figure skater. Finally, as figure skating actually turned out to be too boring, I changed to the Short Track section around 1996. In 2004 I finished school and became a professional sports soldier in the German army.

However I started to notice that it wasn’t really my destination to be a professional sportsman, as I rather missed some intellectual demands. I just felt like there was something else than sports to be waiting for me. When it became clear that I wouldn’t be a part of the Olympic team for Torino, I stopped skating in March 2005 and was selected as a student at WHU Business School. Sometimes I still take part in some professional shows on ice, but that strongly depends on my time schedule at the university.

Talk us about your club; EHC Klostersee Grafing, how does it works?

EHC Klostersee Grafing is mainly an ice-hockey club. There is also a figure skating and a short track section. The ice rink is rather old and the ice quality is not the best, but nevertheless there has been a quite considerable amount of excellent skaters from this club, like for example Susanne Rudolph.

Renate Feichtner is the short track head coach, and the short distance to Munich’s training facilities allows the skaters to practice also there. Actually I am not quite sure if the club will be able to maintain the ice rink, as the hockey team has enormous financial problems at the moment.

Can you talk us about the situation of short track speed skating in Germany? Germany has been dominant in Torino games for many sports, whats the situation of short track among all the other sports?

Well, its right that Germany won the most medals in Torino, but if you take a closer look at the kind of sports we are successful in, you will find out that almost all of them are “classical” Olympic sports and bring years and years of tradition with them. Short Track speed skating is a really young sport in Germany. It came up in the late 80s, and then developed further on when Eastern Germany was reintegrated. It took a lot of time until we had a certain level of expertise and coaching skills, as there was no real pattern to orientate at, and long track skating techniques are far too different to ours.

In the recent years there have been at least some successes of German skaters, but our main problem at the moment is that there are just too few young skaters. You have to see that the popularity of short track in Germany is very low, so people rather like to play soccer or tennis and don’t even know that something like short track even exists. Nevertheless I am convinced that in maybe another ten years Germany will make it to be one of the top short track nations, presumed that there will be enough young athletes to be trained.


Photo: Guido Hegener, at the 1st German National Cup 2000/2001 in Oberstdorf (21./22.10.2000)
Credit: http://shorttrack.net